Statistical analysis
The database was examined for potential outliers concerning questions related to demography variables to exclude invalid questionnaires. Some of the variables were assessed by multiple questions than consolidated in an average (e.g. risk aversion score is the average of questions related to psychological (P) characteristics P1 to P5, health responsibility (R) score is the average of questions R1 to R5) (Appendix 2 ). The representativeness of the participants and completion rate compared to the number of registered beekeepers in the Federal Agency for the Safety of the Food Chain (FASFC) database was evaluated with a chi-squared test (α = 0.05; df=1). A two-samplet -test with unequal variances (Welch-test) was performed to compare the means of each variable regarding the colony mortality rate; i.e. under the 10% colonies mortality threshold and above or equal the 10% (Morgenthaler, 1968). The cut-off level of 0.05 was considered as the p -value for significance.